Cop  3 


Address  aJir     GluiItoW;. 


ftu 


^'ynetV^ 


STEPHEN  Bo  WEEKS 

CLASS  OF  1886; PHD  THE  JOH^B  HOPKINS  UNIVERSITY 


TiE  WEEKS  COLILECTKDN 

©F 


AN  ADDRESS. 


DELIVERED  OCT    15th,    1892. 


Profkssor  E.  a.  alderman, 


A!"    THE 


Guilford  Battel  Ground, 

On  the  occasion  of  the   Dedication  of  the  Monument  to 
the  Maryland  Soldiers. 


Pub  lis  lie  d  by  tJie  Guilford  Battle  Ground  Company, 
January  20ih,  i8gj. 


GREENSBORO,  N.  C: 
C.  F.  Thom.a.s,  Book  and  Job  Pkintkii 

189:^. 


AN  ADDRESS. 


DELIVERED   OCT.    lf)TH.    1892. 


Professor   E.   A.  ALDERMAN, 


Glui-Ford  B.attle  Ground, 

On  the  occasion  of  tlie  Dedication  of  the  Monument  to 
the  Maryland  Soldiers. 


Publislied  by  the  Guilford  Battle  (ri-oiind  Conipaiix 
January  20tJi,  iSgj;. 


GREENSBORO,  N.  C: 

C.  F.  Thom.\s,  Book  and  Job  Printer. 

1893. 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2010  witii  funding  from 

University  of  Nortii  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hill 


http://www.archive.org/details/addressdeliveredOOalde 


Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : 

Tlierc  are  few  periods  of  heroic  greatness  in  any  nation's 
life.  Nations,  like  men,  for  the  most  part  spend  their 
days  learning  the  arts  of  peace  and  gathering  treasures 
which  devitalize,  and  corrupt  and  weaken. 

Now  and  then,  in  human  history,  God  sends  times  of 
thunder  and  storm  to  teach  men  truth  of  word,  strength 
of  thought  and  unselfishness  of  life.  There  have  been  two 
such  periods  in  the  life  of  this  young  continent — the  War 
of  the  Revolution  and  the  Civil  War — and  forth  from 
each  have  proceeded  the  highest  sanctities  of  life,  and 
the  noblest  strains  of  manhood.  Let  it  not  be  understood 
that  we  here  seek  to  glorify  war  or  to  cultivate  the  purely 
military  spirit.  God  forbid  that  this  sweet  autumn  land- 
scape, bathed  in  utter  restfulness  and  peace,  and  touched 
on  grass  and  leaf  and  bough  with  the  pathetic  eloquence 
of  death,  should  ever  again  be  the  scene  of  onset  and 
battle  and  blood.  Our  purpose  is  not  to  apotheosize  war 
and  strife,  but  to  commemorate  that  surpassing  love 
which  teaches  men  to  die  in  defense  of  some  great  cause, 
and  to  celebrate  the  great  works  which  "  God  did  in  the 
days  of  the  fathers  and  in  the  old  time  before  them." 

The  most  thrilling  incident  in  human  history,  to  me,  is 
that  pathetic  inscription  on  the  Grecian  battle  defile 
written  by  Simonides,  now  trite  with  reverent  use: 

"  Go,  stranger,  and  to  Lacedasmon  tell, 
That  here,  obeying  her  behests,  we  fell. " 

There  is  here  no  word  of  self,  no  word  about  the  glory 
of  battle  or  the  stern  joy  which  warriors  feel.  Sparta 
simply  said,  "  Go,  and  if  need  be  die."  And  they  went 
and  happily  died.     After    the    lapse    of  three    thousand 


years  those  simple  words  have  power  to  quicken  my 
pulse  a:Kl  stir  m)-  blood,  h'or  generations  the}' influenced 
Grecian  action  and  educated  Grecian  character.  The 
Greek  bo\'  conned  them  for  his  morning  lesson  and  the 
Greek  girl  sang  them  to  the  music  of  the  h-re  and  cithera 
and  harp  and  wh.en  the}-  were  forgotten  that  beautiful 
race  had  become  a  breed  of  charlatans,  hirelings  and 
slaves. 

High  memories  and  past  deeds  greatly  influence 
national  character.  The  New  Englander  shall  never 
stand  unmoxed  b}-  Pl\-mouth  Rock  while  the  sea  washes 
its  base,  nor  by  that  other  simple  spot  v\'here 

"By  the  rude  bridf^e  that  arched  the  flood 
Their  flag  to  April's  breeze  unfurled, 
Once  the  embattled  farmers  stood 
And  tired  the  shot  heard  'round  the  world." 

The  Marx'lander  and  the  North  Carolinian  should  never 
stand  unmoved  on  this  ground  consecrated  by  the  valor, 
the  constancy  and  the  shedding  of  the  blood  of  their 
forefathers. 

It  was  their  part  in  an  age  of  isolation  and  hardship  to 
dare  to  die  that  they  and  we  might  taste  the  new  and 
sweet  experience  of  human  freedom. 

It  is  our  part,  in  piping  times,  amid  splendid  prosperity, 
and  in  a  memorial  age,  to  set  a  votive  stone  and  by  our 
thoughtfulness  and  care  to  re-create  the  dim  past  of  their 
achievement,  and  to  make  it  palpable  and  sunlit  with 
filial  reverence  and  recollection. 

We  are  met  upon  a  great  battle  field  of  the  American 
Revolution — the  scene  of  the  only  pitched  battle  betvv^een 
the  regular  armies  fought  on  the  soil  of  North  Carolina. 
Time  was  when  the  tangled  thickets  of  a  century  shut  it 
from  the  eyes  of  those  who  sought  it,  but  the  unwearying 
love  and  patriotic  zeal  of  one  North  Carolinian  has  res- 


5 

cued  it  from  the  common  ]andr,cape  and  restored  to  us,  of 
another  generation,  its  impressive  outlines.  Such  unsordid 
and  unselfish  persistence  towards  some  general  good, 
such  a  manifestation  of  local  pride  and  love  of  State  can 
never  be  praised  overmuch,  and  especially  in  this  age  of 
swaggering  prosperity  do  we  need  to  remember  our 
homespun  past,  and  to  cherish  the  abstract  sentiment  of 
patriotism. 

For  love  of  one's  country  is  a  gracious,  a  potent,  an  in- 
definable thing.  Scoundrels  have  worn  it  as  a  gar- 
ment and  hypocrites  as  a  mask.  Like  a  mother's  love, 
or  the  sunset's  glory,  it  defies  statement  and  analysis  ; 
yet  our  hearts  teach  us  that  it  is  a  high  passion  of 
humanity  and  a  definite  influence  in  shaping  national 
character.  Somehow  or  other,  the  brave  Switzer 
breathes  it  in  his  tonic  air  and  his  mountain  tops 
have  become  citadels  of  liberty.  The  impassive 
Dutchman  feels  it  in  his  sturdy  blood  and  invites 
the  enveloping  sea  to  protect  him  from  his  enemies. 
It  has  nerved  the  arm  of  the  English  sailor  and  made  it 
mightier  on  every  sea.  Amid  the  darkest  hours  of  the 
Revolution  when  to  the  eye  of  flesh,  blinded  by  despair, 
there  seemed  no  way  to  peace  and  honor,  it  revealed  to 
the  eye  of  hope  and  yearning  the  straight  and  shining 
path  of  liberty  and  autonomy,  crowded  with  the  throng- 
ing future,  and  clamorous  with  the  shoutings  of  a  grate- 
ful posterity.  And  when  these  Southern  States  in  thrill- 
ing revolution  made  their  marvellous  stand  for  the  right 
as  they  saw  the  right,  we  all  know  how  in  mansion  and 
in  hovel,  in  town  and  country,  over  high  and  lov/  and 
young  and  old  this  holy  emotion  reigned  like  a  king, 
nerving,  urging — aye — deluding  us  up  to  the  last  bitter 
overwhelming  moment.  He  who  knows  not  this  passion 
for  country — this  noble  rage  for  fatherland — whether  in 
the  stress  of  battle  or  in  civic  conflict,  may  not  hope  to 


walk  on  the  higher  ranges  of  life  and  thought,  but  must 
forever  creep  along  its  valleys.  Guilford  l^attle  Ground  is 
no  obscure  spot.  The  Declaration  of  Independence  vas 
a  mere  paper-writing  of  splendid  words  until  March,  1781. 
Nathaniel  Greene  and  Southern  soldiery  by  dint  of 
achievement  on  this  field  translated  it  into  a  modern 
magna  charta  of  splendid  fact.  Here  Freedom  reared 
her  bold  bright  face  above  the  smoke  of  seeming  defeat, 
and  here,  on  these  hills,  amid  the  ilashing  of  the  guns, 
was  born  this  new  and  splendid  experiment  of  represen- 
tative democracy.  The  harried  South  and  the  struggling 
colonies  took  fresh  heart  when  this  deed  was  done,  and 
none  may  picture  what  visions  of  blight  and  ruin  filled 
the  mind  of  Lord  Cornwallis  as  he  stood  in  yonder  val- 
ley, O'Hara  bleeding  on  the  roadside,  Stuart  stark  in 
death,  Webster  mortally  stricken,  over  one  third  of  his 
veteran  soldiery  lying  dead  on  the  field,  and  felt  in  his 
soul  the  mockery  of  his  barren  victory.  If  all  this  be  not 
the  mere  language  of  rhetoric,  why  has  there  not  gathered 
about  this  field  some  measure  of  the  historic  impressive- 
ness  that  enwraps  Lexington  and  Yorktown  ?  We  shall 
not  seek  long  for  an  answer. 

No  brave,  high-spirited,  assertive,  sensitive  people  have 
ever  been  so  careless  of  their  past  as  the  people  of  North 
Carolina  and  the  South.  In  every  civil  and  military 
commotion  in  the  making  of  this  nation  we  have  borne  a 
sturdy  and  fruitful  part.  But  we  have  contented  our- 
selves with  action.  Our  statues  have  yet  to  rise,  our 
records  have  yet  to  be  written,  our  monuments  have  yet 
to  be  erected. 


"  Thoughts,  that  great  hearts  once  broke  for. 
We  breathe  cheaply  in  the  common  air, 
The  dust  we  trample  heedlessly 

Once  throbbed  in  saints  and  heroes  rare." 


No  citizen  of  North  Carolina  has  ever  been  put  into 
bronze  or  marble.  The  ardent  Carolina  boy,  fired  with 
the  Homeric  spirit  of  youth  and  seeking  for  his  hero  nat- 
urally among  his  kindred,  can  nowhere  look  into  the 
chiselled  features  of  a  son  of  his  State  gathering  loftier 
aspirations  and  majestic  lessons  of  loyalty  and  human 
immortality. 

The  eloquence  of  our  orators  is  a  far,  faint  echo.  The 
wisdom  and  care  and  patience  that  builded  our  social 
order,  welded  its  discordant  and  diverse  elem.ents,  and 
created  a  unique  and  forceful  civilization,  have  become 
the  property  of  the  beggar  and  are  at  the  mercy  of  the 
historical  scribbler.  This  is  not  wisdom.  Nay,  more,  it 
is  a  high  form  of  folly  in  governments  resting  on  popular 
love  and  popular  care. 

The  infancy  of  all  States  is  their  heroic  era,  their  high 
statured  age,  when  into  "grander  forms  our  m.ortal  metal 
runs."  Each  age  will  have  its  creeds  and  its  philosophies 
despising  all  that  went  before,  and,  in  turn,  to  be  despised 
by  the  next.  Each  age  will  have  its  political  panaceas 
for  all  human  ills  and  the  ills  will  not  be  cured  by  them, 
and  fresh  theories  will  be  twined  until  the  end  of  time, 
but  great  actions  live  forever  and  wisdom  will  reverently 
treasure  them  up.  Let  no  one  fancy  that  we  are  here 
solely  to  honor  the  men  who  here  dared  to  die  "and 
leave  their  children  free."  In  a  high  sense  we  cannot 
honor  them.  Each  lies  in  his  narrow  house  and  history 
has  lit  it  up  forever  with  her  everlasting  lamp.  These 
men  wrought  their  own  monument  by  the  strength  of 
great  fortitude  and  great  love,  and  it  lies  about  us  to-day 
— the  goodly  heritage  of  a  free  home  :  this  patient,  con- 
servatively— progressive  old  Commonwealth,  lacking  in 
forwardness,  instant  in  daring  ;  not  sudden  and  quick  in 
quarrel,  but  upon  occasion  as  unbending  as  steel  and  as 
furious  as  the  storm — this  birth-spot  of  yours  and  mine 


and  of  our  fathers,  lovable  in  its  ver}-  limitations,  and 
clad  from  its  hard-beset  and  struggling  childhood  in  the 
brave  garments  of  unfailing  common-sense,  and  unfalter- 
ing manhood — this  dear,  odd,  just,  home-like,  God-fear- 
ing native  land,  guiltless  of  boasting,  fruitful  in  doing, 
stainless  in  honor,  with,  its  tender  constraining  power  to 
make  of  a  man,  once  a  North  Carolinian,  a  North  Caro- 
linian forever  !  And  so  we  are  come,  the  old  man  in  his 
weakness,  the  youth  in  his  strength,  and  these  young 
women  in  their  uhite  innocence,  to  honor  ourselves  and 
by  the  contemplation  of  duty  and  de\'otion  gather 
strength  that  7('/:  ma}-  perpetuate  in  peace  and  honor  the 
noble  edifice  which  the  fathers  created  in  w^ar  and  weak- 
ness. 

Republican  citizenship,  indeed,  is  a  sort  of  unceasing 
civic  warfare.  The  battle  ro}'al  is  waging  all  along  the 
line  this  very  quadrennial  summer.  "The  jewel  of  liberty 
will  not  remain  supinely  in  the  family  of  freedom,"  but 
like  a  glimpse  of  the  Holy  Grail  is  won  and  kept  by 
striving,  by  vigilance,  and  by  purity.  No  kings  or  Par- 
liaments now  menace  us  across  seas,  but  new  forms  of 
oppression  and  new  shapes  of  danger  have  been  born 
into  civilization  and  above  the  uproar  of  these  titantic 
agencies  the  voices  of  unrest  and  discontent  are  heard. 
The  great  republic,  destined  in  the  economy  of  God  to 
teach  the  beauty  of  peace  and  the  sacredness  of  the  in- 
dividual, still  stands  in  need  of  men. 

"  Ah  God  !  for  a  man 

With  a  head,  heart  and  hand 
Like  the  simple  ones  gone  forever  and  forever  by, 
Autocrat,  democrat,  aristocrat — what  care  I? 
A  man  who  fears  God  and  can  not  lie." 

In  the  name  of  the  State  of  North  Carolina  and  of  the 
Guilford  Battle  Ground  Company,  whose  representative  I 


9 

am,  I  welcome  to  the  State  atid  to  this  field  tlie  represen- 
tative of  the  Maryland  Historical  Society, and  receive  at  his 
hands  this  new  memorial  stone  which  he  and  Vv-e  to-day, 
in  filial  love  and  in  just  pride,  in  the  presence  of  this 
goodly  company  and  of  the  sweet  face  of  nature,  set  to 
the  eternal  honor  of  an  heroic  ancestry.  Our  distin- 
guished guest  has  spoken  with  power  and  eloquence  of 
the  part  played  by  Maryland  and  North  Carolina  in  the 
Revolutionary  struggle,  and  I  shall  not  seek  to  follow 
after  him.  Let  this  much  be  said,  however  :  It  does  not 
become  a  North  Carolinian  to  speak  of  tardiness  in  mat- 
ters of  monuments  and  memorials  when  Harvey,  and 
Ashe,  and  Harnett,  Badger  Mangum,  and  Macon  sleep 
in  unmarked  graves,  but  one  cannot  resist  an  expression 
of  surprise  that  the  Monumental  City  should  have  waited 
one  hundred  and  eleven  years  to  mark  the  spot  where 
her  brave  sons,  led  by  Howard  and  Anderson,  whose 
dust  we  trample,  sprang  like  lions  against  the  undaunted 
front  of  Stuart  and  his  guards. 

The  man  whose  patriotism  does  not  glow  brighter  on 
the  plains  of  Marathon  and  whose  piety  does  not  grow 
warmer  amid  the  ruins  of  lona  has  become  the  subject  of 
historic  pity.  Such  pity  may  well  be  bestowed  upon  the 
Marylauder  who  does  not  stand  bareheaded  with  a  heart 
full  of  manly  pride  and  exultation  at  Guilford  Court 
House,  at  Hobkirk's  Hill,  at  Cowpens — aye,  at  every 
Southern  battle  field  from  Camden  to  Eutaw.  The  first 
Maryland  regiment  was  the  heart  and  the  hammer  of  the 
the  Southern  Army.  What  the  Tenth  Legion  was  to 
Caesar,  the  old  Guard  to  Napoleon  the  Guards  to  Well- 
ington, this  Maryland  line  was  to  Nathaniel  Greene  in 
every  step  of  his  God-directed  flight  from  Carolina  to  the 
Dan.  North  Carolina,  therefore,  receives  this  granite 
boulder  sacred  to  these  men  who  shed  their  blood  for 
freedom  on  her  soil,  with   deep  and  reverent  gratitude. 


10 

There  is  a  story  of  the  Eastern  Greeks  that  pleases  me 
well.  Phidias,  their  \von(irous  sculptor,  had  wronght 
from  gold  and  iv^or}',  a  statue  to  01}'mpian  ?Ieus. 
Splendid  in  beaten  gold  and  precious  gem,  sixty  feet 
high,  it  uprose  in  the  sky,  a  glory  in  the  air.  The  beauty- 
loving  Greeks  enacted  by  law  that  the  descendants  of 
Phideas  should  forever  guard  it  from  harm  or  stain. 

Generation  after  generation  did  its  duty  and  long  years 
afterwards  \\hen  the  Roman  soldier  climbed  the  hill  he 
saw  it  standing,  as  of  old,  defectless  and  erect,  glancing 
the  sunlight  from  its  burnished  surface.  Influences  are  at 
work  to  make  of  this  spot  the  center  of  historic  and 
patriotic  interest  in  North  Carolina.  Each  year  some 
new  stone  is  added.  Here  and  there  memorials  arise, 
pathetic  in  their  simplicity  and  cheapness,  sublime  in 
their  purpose  and  motive.  We  pray  that  this  work,  thus 
begun,  will  be  continued;  that  Virginia  and  Rhode  Island 
and  Delaware  will  remember  their  sons,  that  the  National 
government,  in  the  day  of  its  power  and  youth,  will  re- 
member its  creators,  and  that  somewhere  on  this  plane, 
broad-based  and  massive,  there  will  arise  a  shapely 
column  towards  Vv'hich,  in  proud  remembrance,  the  eyes 
of  the  men  and  the  women  of  the  twentieth  century  may 
turn  in  an}-  hour  of  national  disaster  or  despondency. 
Let  yonder  massive  gtanite  block,  with  its  legend  of 
"  manly  deeds  and  womanly  words,"  stand  forever  a 
fresh  and  sympathetic  bond  of  amity  between  the  proud 
commonwealth  that  gives  it  and  the  proud  commonwealth 
that  receives  it. 

Let  it  typify  in  its  simple  unhewn  strength  the  stead- 
fastness and  endurance  of  North  Carolina  w^hose  sons 
fired  the  last  shot  on  this  neld,  aud  the  unconquerable 
courage  of  Maryland,  whose  sons  bore  its  deadliest 
brunt,  and  here  plucked  from  encompassing  ruin  sub- 
stantial victory. 


Photomolint 

Pamphlet 

Binder 

Gaylord  Bros. 

Makers 

Syracuse,  N.  Y. 

PAr.  JAN  21,  1808 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N  C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00032691329 


This  book  may  be  kept  out  one  month  unless  a  recall 
notice  is  sent  to  you.  It  must  be  brought  to  the  North 
Carolina  Collection  (in  Wilson  Library)  for  renewal. 


